


Sorcerers

by Ember Nickel (primeideal)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Challenge Response, F/M, Long timespan, Real-person cameos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:19:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primeideal/pseuds/Ember%20Nickel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once a century, Nicholas was tempted. Originally written May 2011.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sorcerers

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 10, 9, 8... Challenge on HPFC (Fanfiction.Net), determining the word count in each section.

No one reaches my age, nor most of the ages I've seen pass behind me, without making many friends and enemies, students and teachers. But of course, how few alive have reached my age at all...

Perhaps it is for the best I never told anyone all my secrets. My reasons for silence through the decades have been as various as those I have come across—once a century, I was truly tempted. But now the presence of anyone like me could put the wizarding world in great danger. Not that war wouldn't pass in just a blink of my lifetime.

* * *

By the time I'd gotten the first draft of elixir going—there was no Stone yet, those days, just a very rudimentary potion—my old tutor, Corneille, was well into his nineties. I might have given some to him, but I don't think he really grasped what I'd done, and all the better for him. Truth be told, I kept quiet out of pure selfishness that time. I was confident what I'd brewed, but I was scared of spending the rest of eternity with him, him always a step ahead of me.

* * *

I'd been married for nearly a century by the time I met Lorenzo. In the lab-oratory, he was as diligent a worker as could be found, the only man as patient as an immortal. Outside, however, his debauchery was a bit of an embarrassment. I would trust him alone with the Elixir of Life, certainly. But the number of his... _companions_  he would surely want to pass it off to, had he made a Stone of his own, rather concerned me.

* * *

As for Philippus—knowing him all his life, I could get away with calling him that—he didn't care for gold, which by that point I appreciated. He wanted to use the Stone to understand alchemy better. I told him he was brilliant enough for the time being, told him to listen to what I'd picked up on, but he wasn't content to be himself without extra understanding. And that scared me.

* * *

I mostly left Isaac to his own devices, assuming he was brilliant enough to create his own Stone. I still think he was, if he hadn't turned to those Muggle contraptions...but then again, alchemy can take its toll from time to time. He had Healing Potions for the Plumbum Blight, of course, but some tolls are not as easily healed.

* * *

Ahmad wanted to make Elixir to share. With everyone. A noble goal, I told him, but an impractical one. He left in a huff.

I don't know what became of him. Perhaps he could not have understood, but by my fifth century I was used to taking the long view.

* * *

Louise puzzled me. She was a great alchemist, but laughed at the Stone. "You can turn anything into gold? What will you do on the day there is no need for gold?"

So I let her be. Her loss.

* * *

Albus won my trust almost immediately. He was the one wizard I offered Elixir to, and he turned it down. I should've asked why, again, now that it doesn't matter.

* * *

Only now I realize I shared it with the one person who showed me the magic that truly brings immortality.

* * *

Perenelle, my love, you were beside me this whole time.


End file.
